Yesterday we commented on the latest inglorious victory the Cadets have achieved
over the Trudoviks in the State Duma. The Cadets compelled the Trudoviks to
withdraw their proposal to appeal to the people and to open the debate on the
Bill for the abolition of capital punishment without observing the formalities
which reduce the Duma to a wretched and impotent appendage of the bureaucracy.

Today, the sorry Goremykins of Novoye Vremya and the Octobrists of
Slovo fully confirm our appraisal of the Cadets’ victory over the
Trudoviks. “The Trudovik Group,” writes Novoye Vremya,
“proposed something that ran counter to the law establishing the Duma. It
proposed that the Duma should proceed to discuss the substance of the Bill and
then to take a vote, without the prescribed one month’s interval, and therefore
without giving the Minister of Justice an opportunity to express his
opinion. The slightest indulgence towards the sort of laxity to which Russians
are at times prone to the detriment of the law would have the Duma committing
actions that would undoubtedly have been outside the law, with all the
consequences that follow from pursuing the smooth and slippery path of
’unauthorised action’.”

The Cadet speakers, continues Novoye Vremya, “hotly protested
against the illegal measures proposed by the Trudoviks” and “gained
a brilliant victory”. Concerning the withdrawal of their proposal by the
Trudoviks Novoye Vremya observes: “Things ended to everybody’s
satisfaction, and to the greater triumph of law.” It is quite natural for the
sorry Goremykins to rejoice at the triumph of this sort

of law; nobody expects anything different from them. From the Cadets,
unfortunately, too many people expect some thing different. In conclusion
Novoye Vremya writes: “Any deputy who follows Mr. Aladyin’s
example will undoubtedly deserve to be reproached with his unpardonable
frivolity.”

In the Octobrist Slovo, Mr. Hippolit Hofstätter lectures the Cadets
and admonishes them in a fatherly way. “Real revolution is in the air,” he
says. The Cadets don’t want that, and therefore, they must be
sensible. “As long as the present law provides the slightest opportunity
of achieving further, fully legitimate, legal, political and social gains, it is
the sacred duty of the intelligently-progressive members of the State Duma to
act as a steadfast opposition while keeping within the law, and not to provoke
conflicts at all costs....”

The position of the sorry Goremykins and the Octobrists is clear. It is high
time we made a clearer and more sober appraisal of the Cadets’ position, which
is akin to it.

Notes

[1]Sorry Goremykins—representatives of the
reactionary-bureaucratic government quarters in tsarist Russia, headed by
I. L. Goremykin, then Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Their mouthpiece was
the Black-Hundred paper Novoye Vremya (New Times).